Transcript Jaques Derrida (1930-) - karl skutski, skutski, film

Language,
Metaphor
&
Film
East & West in Film & Print
Basic Concepts
Language & Truth

Language is extremely imprecise

Language at best approximates reality



It is a system of signs (signifiers) that
represent or connote “meaning” (signified)
Words work best at describing objects that
can be verified by the senses
Words become less accurate and more
metaphorical when attempting to describe
other spheres of reality
THE MEANING OF MEANING
Basic Concepts
Two Views of Language
SIGNIFIED
SIGNIFIER

Idealists

Romanticists

Mystics

Archetypal
THE MEANING OF MEANING
Basic Concepts
Two Views of Language
SIGNIFIED
SIGNIFIER
SIGNIFIER
SIGNIFIER

Idealists

Postmodernists

Romanticists

Poststructuralists

Mystics

Constructivists

Archetypal
THE MEANING OF MEANING
Basic Concepts
The Power of Metaphor
Metaphor is the basis of
language and thought.
THE MEANING OF MEANING
Basic Concepts
The Power of Metaphor
There are no absolute truths.
THE MEANING OF MEANING
Basic Concepts
The Power of Metaphor
All we can say about anything
is that it is sort of like this...
THE MEANING OF MEANING
How Language Means
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
1. Words are signs of natural facts.
2. Particular natural facts are symbols of
particular spiritual facts.
3. Nature is the symbol of spirit.
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
How Language Means
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
“Every word which is used to express a moral or
intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be
borrowed from some material appearance. Right
means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit
primarily means wind...We say the heart to express
emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought
and emotion are words borrowed from sensible
things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature.”
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
How Language Means
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
“It is not words only that are emblematic; it is things
which are emblematic. Every natural fact is a
symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in
nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and
that state of the mind can only be described by
presenting that natural appearance as its picture.
Light and darkness are our familiar expression for
knowledge and ignorance; and heat for love. Visible
distance behind and before us, is respectively our
image of memory and hope.”
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
Power of Metaphor
Ralph Waldo Emerson
LANGUAGE (1849)
“The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
NATURE AS BASIS OF LANGUAGE
Power of Metaphor
T. S. Eliot
OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE (1919)
“The only way of expressing emotion in
the form of art is by finding an 'objective
correlative'; in other words, a set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events
which shall be the formula of that
particular emotion; such that when the
external facts, which must terminate in
sensory experience, are given, the
emotion is immediately evoked."
EVOKING OF EMOTIONS
Power of Metaphor
Robert Frost
EDUCATION BY POETRY
“I have wanted in late years to go further
and further in making metaphor the whole
of thinking."
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING
Power of Metaphor
Freiderich Nietzche
WHAT IS TRUTH?
“What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army
of metaphors..."
All philosophies rest on the shifting texture
of figurative language.
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING
Power of Metaphor
Milan Kundera
“Metaphor is a means of grasping, through
instantaneous revelation, the ungraspable
essence of things.”
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF THINKING
Film Theory
Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
CINEMATIC REALISM


Cinema and photography are media
that an artist can utilize to review the
deeper meanings behind the
phenomena of existence
Close observation of natural
phenomena reveal planetary
consciousness

The spirit behind the “real” object
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Long takes (long hard gaze)
METAPHOR AS THE BASIS OF CINEMATIC TRUTH
Andre Bazin (1918-1958)
“ We know that under the image revealed
there is another which is truer to reality
and under this image still another and yet
again still another under this last one, right
down to the true image of reality, absolute,
mysterious, which no on will ever see.”
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky
Krzysztof Kieslowski
“ In Blue Kieslowski is attempting to render
complex and difficult emotional states and
situations from within the confines of the
cinematic language he has at his disposal.
Indeed, I would certainly contend that he
stretches that language as far as possible
so as to open the ground of new cinematic
vistas (the sugar cube receding in the
coffee, the mysterious flautist). “
Krzysztof Kieslowski
“There are details in Blue that seem to
convey a proximity to hell, despair, dread
and damnation. What Kieslowski is trying
to do is to find a cinematic language that
can express Julie’s dilemmas (in much the
same way that Shakespeare, for example,
stretched the written and spoken word to
express the dilemmas and passions of his
characters).”
Richard Rushton, Reading Three Colours: Blue,
Senses of Cinema
The Power of Metaphor
There are no absolute truths.
Language is imperfect.
Metaphor is the basis of all thought.
Film and literature are the highest forms of
experiental “knowledge.”